"Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today." - Gabriela Mistral

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Vomit, Vomit Everywhere

This past week, my 19-month old son has thrown up twice. When he was on a mostly-milk diet, a little regurgitation, or even a lot of it, didn't really matter because it was easy to sponge off and just looked and smelled like sour milk. But now he's eating like a regular person, the forcible expulsion of all the contents of his tummy all over the floor and myself is not so easy to clean up.

There is a gastrointestinal bug going around so we were worried he may have caught it, but thankfully, it appears he hasn't. It seems both incidents may have just been a result of eating too much, too quickly.

The first time I put down to the result of too much running during and immediately after eating his dinner, because when I approached Little A as he was being fed by the au pair, he ran towards me already retching. Full-on throwing up quickly followed, and he and I went straight into the tub to wash off while the au pair and the day girl mopped up the floor.

The second time happened two nights later. Unsure about what time he was going to sleep, (as his sleeping schedule is just starting to get back to normal) we fed him again 2 hours after he'd had a full meal. Half an hour after he fell asleep, he woke up crying and holding his mouth. He cried and cried and then he threw up. Luckily, we were in the bathroom already as I was trying to see if he was teething or had a mouth sore. (I found two mouth sores the next day, so those may have been the cause of the hysterical crying.) I popped him into the tub, but the poor boy was so tired he kept trying to lean his head on my vomit-covered shoulder to go back to sleep.

I scrubbed him clean, and then myself, as he sat in the tub with his eyes shut, sobbing quietly. Poor baby. If I hadn't been so covered in puke, I'd have put him back to sleep first before getting cleaned up. Once he was back in dreamland I had to wash our soiled clothes and bath mat before finally going to bed.

Ordinarily, another person's vomit and poo are probably the worst things once can imagine getting on one's self, but when it's your own child's, you don't mind so much. The disgust is a far second to worrying about the discomfort your little one must be feeling. This must be what they mean about unconditional love.

Since those two incidents happened, we've been feeding Little A less at each meal, but today both my husband and I noticed that he looks thinner so hope to increase the quantities again soon.

Instead of the tummy bug, our son caught a cold. Probably because he went back to playschool last week. Oh well, you can't win them all.